Back in the 1960s, when photocopying first became commercially successful … People adjusted the way they thought about things, and people really didn’t go reproduce their books on Xerox machines. They certainly did copy parts of them. But it didn’t kill the book industry … There are ways to get compensated for things that aren’t part of the model that exists today, but will appear as part of the new network environment.
Predictor: Warnock, John
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, David Henry Goodstein interviews John Warnock, the founder of Adobe Systems. Goodstein quotes Warnock: ”Back in the 1960s, when photocopying first became commercially successful, people in the business all said that copyright laws were dead. Well, copyright laws weren’t dead. People adjusted the way they thought about things, and people really didn’t go reproduce their books on Xerox machines. They certainly did copy parts of them. But it didn’t kill the book industry … There are ways to get compensated for things that aren’t part of the model that exists today, but will appear as part of the new network environment. Adobe has actually talked to a lot of information producers about what that model is and how it’s going to change. I think that there are a lot of ways you can license information, and there are a lot of domains in which it can be controlled. It’s really the business model that determines where you take your value out of the thing.”
Biography:John Warnock was the founder of Adobe, a major software maker of the 1990s. He introduced the concept of PDF in 1991. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Copyright/Intellectual Property/Plagiarism
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Scriptwriter: John Warnock, the Inventor of PostScript and the Founder of Adobe Systems, Plots the Future of Media
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/postscript_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney